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Cell Metabolism Artificially Enhanced
NewScientist is reporting that Swiss researchers have shown that a cell's metabolism can be increased without altering the genetic makeup. Small plastic packages of enzymes have been successfully inserted into cells, increasing metabolism. "Meier and colleagues coated their polymer vesicles in a chemical that encouraged human white blood cells called macrophages to engulf them. The small capsules contained enzymes, just like natural organelles. The enzymes chosen produced fluorescent chemicals, signaling they were working without problems inside their new host."
now people can be lazy AND fit... mark one against global warming
I see this as very interesting commentary on the human persona. We consume energy which is of extreme importance and complain of its excessive cost whilst we abuse it. We then expend more precious energy to figure out ways to use more energy in an inefficient manner to trick our bodies into no longer storing the energy for later dire straights.
The fundamental basis of this idea is flawed. I personally don't get it.
However, it is certainly marketable and will cause someone to be filthy rich if they can really force humans to expend more energy without doing anything that actually requires the energy (such as exercise).
But I digress, all that aside, the pure discovery is interesting.
Thank you, researchers. The world really needed a metabolism-enhancing enzyme that turns you green.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
This is /. so I suppose reading the article isn't a given. There are other uses than just for increasing the metabolism. Other uses include targeting cancerous cells specifically, giving lactose intolerant people enzymes in their stomachs, and making your skin do photosynthesis so you don't even have to eat. They're all theories around the new "NanoReactor" they created for delivering their payloads. I'm assuming that increasing the metabolism was the easiest test to perform in a dish.
If they fed people like they feed dogs and cats it would be a lot harder to get fat. Two bowls of dry food a day and water.
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Technically, we are beyond survival.
Got a chip on your shoulder? Sounds as if fat kids used to (still?) beat you up.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Now with flavour!
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Perhaps he's a fat person who hates himself for being so fat? Judging from the site he's posting on and the hate that he's spewing for no apparent reason, I'm going to guess that he's 25, has the mentality of a 15 year old, lives in his mother's basement and gets told how dirty and sinful he must be to have so much weight.
:D
But those are just guesses. Who knows, maybe I'm being optimistic
Seems like great science work. However, I'm a bit worried about the potential applications. If/when this process becomes cheap, I can just see this becoming permanent make-up.
Cynical Idealist
This is why someone needs to invent Bachelor Chow already and no substitutions I want exactly how it is in Futurama.
So? It will raise peoples metabolism? For what purpose?
Metabolism is more than just eating food. Increased metabolism could result in increased energy in the cells, used for, oh lets say athletes? It would be virtually impossible to detect using normal meassures. I can certainly see a benefit for some people.
What's funny is that there's plenty of food, the shortfall is mostly due to diverting the food to ethanol and feeding livestock. The biggest obstacle to feeding the poor (arguably the only obstacle) is politics and other, non-food-related problems. Exception being people who really have some form of medical condition which make their metabolism or body not work as intended, but those people are probably very rare, if there even are any Wow. Publicly doubting that there are medical conditions that could make someone fat. What a great, insightful comment you make; you're very rational. Next time you make a comment like this, you might as well just scream about how much you hate fat people and leave the environmentalism and poor people out of it.
So? It will raise peoples metabolism? For what purpose?
Here's some conditions that occur to me that might be improved by suddenly raising metabolism:
1) depression
2) help cure (or recover from) diseases for which the body has an autoimmune response
3) Rapid weight loss (if, for example, you'll be dead within 10 days if you don't lose 30 pounds within 5 days, which I've heard can come up)
4) Blood loss recovery
It should also be noted that pretty much everything that raises metabolism also does something else. Is that something else medically beneficial to someone? Maybe.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Cells != people.
increasing the metabolism of a single cell could save lives and reverse the effects of some diseases. Thankfully, at least for most of us, we are made up of more than one cell.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Could have at least, for a change, put some more effort into it. Something small, like citing more of the dialog in question goes a long way.
"And I for one welcome our new florescent, metabolically enhanced overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted slashdot personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves."
(Cells use sugar for energy,... right?)
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
The original paper did not increase the metabolism of the macrophage. What the original paper did was encage an enzyme, trypsin, in a "nanometer-sized polymer vesicle". This vesicle was coated with a protein that induce macrophages to engulf the vesicle (which is what macrophages do - they phagocytose). The authors then incubated macrophages which contained the vesicles with a dye (BZiPAR) that fluoresces (emits a wavelength of light - in this case green) when treated with trypsin (trypsin cuts of parts of the BZiPAR that suppress fluorescence).
We already know how to non-genetically introduce proteins to cells, for example using liposomes or the tat-peptide approach. What makes this work interesting is that the polymer vesicle is more stable than liposomes and, unlike the other methods, the vesicles don't release their content into the cell. Instead, the cell's components have to enter into the polymer vesicle.
This is an interesting technical development. It is not, however, everything that Mr. Osborne makes it out to be.
As long as it's not like Chuck Wagon :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnwppcD-SMc&feature=related
Because if that miniature horse and wagon comes ripping through my place, I'll grab my shotgun, then chase it down...and kill it!
*grumble* Damn mini horse and wagon goes tearing through the place and jumps into the frikkin tv EVERY time I try to sit down and eat! Worse than those telemarketers! *grumble*
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Cats are supposed to regulate their food intake well, atleast that's what the food bags says, thought mine is fat. I've tested to not give her that much food but her complaints are annoying so she just tend to always have food in her bowl.
;D, vegan as I am ;D (Cattle meat lets out lots of greenhouse gases during the whole production line/live aswell. Chicken are much better, but I think it's very cruel with chicken production. Eat your tofu instead ;D, or even better beans and lentils.)
:/
Anyway I think one of the biggest problem are that people don't see and eat food for functionality, but rather for pleasure. They don't eat to get the nutrition and energy they need for the day, they eat because they like it, it tastes good and makes them feel good.
But to take coffee and some snack because you have a break at work, that cola you have beside your desk just because you like it, serve and eat food for hours when the family meet, eat up everything in your lunchbox because it happened to be there, take a treat because you wanted it, eat because you are bored, and so on suck. Fluid foods are even worse because it's so easy to consume vast amounts of them and they are normally just consumed for taste alone, to add juice and soda to your meal just raise the energy consumtion even further but it doesn't feel like you are eating something.
Eat because you need it and nothing else. Find something else to make you happy and feel good for doing. Do some workouts, have sex, give someone a hug, watch a good movie, do your hobbies, whatever suits you.
Also haven't the population of planet earth raised from like 1 billion to over 6 billion in 100 years? Even if there are food for everyone or possible to make it while using even more space there will indeed be a problem if and when the population keeps expanding at this rate, 36 billion people 2100? We already have a fish fleet 5 times to large and all the fish people eat now will be exterminated by 2040 if I remember correctly. Thinks like our european eels have droped in numbers a lot and they live long, I think they got sexually mature late and the amount of them reaching europe have accordingly to wikipedia droped 90, maybe even 98% since the 70s! How long will it take for all those fishes to come back to the old volumes? Is it even likely? Will we really stop fish them? I doubt it... Especially since the fleet are just so big and many people will refused to stop and people want food.
Which btw gives me the right to say that omnivore humans suck
Anyway, considering how fast the population grow, how fat people already are, how much food are probably wasted thought refining into more precious food and animal products, do we really need something which let people eat even more?!!?! We are already affecting all other life on the planet way to much, please don't let us spread and invade it even more. It would be so much better if we where only 500 million or something, that's a lot of humans anyway, just compare it to the amounts of all other primates
We need to die, fast! Maybe we can let out some chemicals which makes most of us infertile, to bad it will probably affect other animals aswell.
I'm more concerned about what target those people would switch to if we somehow successfully managed to eradicate obesity.
"Let's face it, it's a good story. Accuracy would kill it."
Quite close. I used to be beat up as child, have always been small, am 28, has the mentality of someone much young, live alone, have thought that I was "fat" even thought I wasn't (went down to 54 kg at 173 cm as worst), and kind of still does.
Still valid points thought.
I know how I still feel if I have chocolate nearby, I could easily eat the whole bar but I don't because I know it's a bad idea. Some people don't think so it seems. Most of my food is very boring and I don't feel an urge to eat lots of it, but I try to eat enough because I know I need it.
If I would just eat what I feelt like eating I would lose weight. But as I said most people don't eat because they need to, they eat because.. well.. they have nothing else to do atm and the food is available.
Something like this has been recognized to occur in certain cancers, through Oncosomes. In such cases, the cancerous cells bud off vesicles which fuse with healthy cells, containing oncoproteins that induce a cancer-like phenotype in the target cell, despite no change in the healthy cell's genotype.
Anyway, I find this interesting. While restricted to situations where you could physically make the delivery, it raises the possibility of obtaining (temporarily) effects similar to those of gene-therapy without the gene. By producing your target protein ex vivo you eliminate an entire class of problems revolving around how to introduce and express foreign DNA.
and the first customers will be... Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
I thought about that part aswell, but in another subject. But since I didn't knew how the drug worked I didn't mentioned anything about it.
But if it raises mitochondia activity they will burn more fuel, but that will probably end up with more free radicals, more oxidizing damage and eventually earlier cell/person death. So this drug may eventually kill you prematurely.
May help them, may not. For explosive work you use ATP and not carbohydrates, for less explosive work the acidity may stop you instead, depending on of there is enough oxygen available or not. And so on.
What says it will be impossible to measure? Most drugs used for cheating gets possible to detect by time, and many of them are quite "biological", just look for really high concentration of the enzymes in question. Sure it may not stop everyone, but most.
Extra fat weight don't use much extra energy at all, even extra muscle doesn't use that much extra energy while resting. The fat will be like say 1-2 kcal / kg or something, it won't help you in a way which matters in rest. Sure it will use more energy to move all that weight, so if the fat person starts moving it will makes a difference, but then really fat people often don't move that much or fast or explosive so I don't know how much difference it makes. The amount of muscle and cardiovascular condition probably set the limit for how much energy you can consume in an amount of time. Not how much you weight.
Food are less suitable for someone who are already fat because it will make them even fatter, that was really hard to see was it? If they consume the energy I have no problem whatsoever with it. (Except it wastes planetary resources, but I don't care that much about it.)
I know there are lots of food, and possible to make more, but imho the less the affect the planet the better. So if we would consume less food, areal, water, energy and so on the better. Even if we can do it or not.
Exception being people who really have some form of medical condition which make their metabolism or body not work as intended, but those people are probably very rare, if there even are any Wow. Publicly doubting that there are medical conditions that could make someone fat. What a great, insightful comment you make; you're very rational. Next time you make a comment like this, you might as well just scream about how much you hate fat people and leave the environmentalism and poor people out of it. I know there are some medical conditions which probably actually makes your body a problem, and not your mind, but for most people it's probably not a medicial condition, if it was how come so many more people have gotten it the last years? There are just to easy to get lots of cheap, good, energy dense food. And the problem with possible medical conditions are that many people will probably find an excuse in them.
All valid responses, a few questios thought: .. Also with treating food like something we need to eat to survive and not something we eat because it's fun those people would probably not need to take such drastic measurements.
1) how?
3) I doubt it will make such a difference, 13.6 kg of body fat would hold approximately 95.200 kcal, so you would need to raise your metabolism by 20.000 kcal / day to reach that goal
I mean, on one hand it's interesting, but on the other hand, won't a good healthy helping of amphetamines do the same thing?
First paragraph: Bunch of strawman arguments
Second paragraph: Clearly you don't unsderstand eating and food availability.
"Simply useless, not to say really stupid!"
Great arguement, it doesn't even knock over your strawman!
"What are needed aren't more stimulants or excuses, eat for performance not for pleasure and lift your fucking ass!"
Yeah....exept you are over looking the fact that going on a diet with will take years to loose weight, this could make it a shorter time.
You should check into reality once is a while and at least try to understand what the hell you are taking about. Jeez eat a donut and shut the hell up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I used to be beat up as child, have always been small, am 28, has the mentality of someone much young, live alone, have thought that I was "fat" even thought I wasn't (went down to 54 kg at 173 cm as worst), and kind of still does.
Holy unstable tense/perspective/conjugation, Batman!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Great! In addition to artificially creating cancer (see asbestos, nanotubes, smoking, nuclear fission, tanning booths, cell phones, etc.) we can now create artificial cancer.
Cancer by the way is when a cell begins growing and dividing uncontrollably. Such cells have a higher metabolism.
1) Depends on the cause of the depression. Its sometimes linked to metabolism in some ways.
3) Yeah...but sometimes every calorie counts.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I love it when people know what they're talking about :-)
You can't mine sugar, it's grown. Douche bag.
Help fight spam
You just keep telling yourself that while you're down in the cave, mining sugar.
The Swiss Researchers also wish to extend their thanks to the two main sponsors of the research, Major League Baseball and the US Olympic Team.
I stole this Sig
I take it you believe in the butterfly effect? THe way I see it this may even itself out. Turn up the metabolish and the cells die faster which means you die faster. You may use up the same amount of resources but just faster. The only issue is how to replenish resources faster than we do now and fast enough on a mass scale if this is applied to humans.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
No. If you are maintaining a stable (but high) weight, even a 100-kcal reduction on your daily intake will cause a net weight loss.
Raising your metabolism by 20,000 kcal/day would likely cause you to consume your fat, muscles, and die of starvation within a fortnight.
I think you underestimate the power of the processes that we use internally.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Hey come on now. I've seen this one already. Then they can't eat fast enough to keep up with their super metabolism and their nerves kinda take a beating too and then when they're in the middle of a goa'uld ship, their body can't take it anymore and they risk failing the mission. Come on, who can't see that coming? Sci fi shows are here to warn us, people! Like the Jetsons telling us we're all gonna have to live in the sky if the sea level rises and we'll all have dishwashers and vending machines!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
"The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And you have burned so very very brightly, Roy."
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
There's enough grain produced in the world to feed every person on the planet a sufficient number of calories.
Unfortunately, very little of it is produced in the places where people are starving, there's a lot of wastage, and there are people who eat many times more food than they need to.
The solution: Round up obese people and feed them to the third world. Soylent Green for all!
HA! I always love it when the first post is rated -1 Redundant. It's like a paradox.
the Umbrella Corporation.
Serious sounds like a great idea. What could possibly go wrong?
A reasonable weight loss are 0.5 kg / week so 26 kg in a year. Fast weight loss suck because it makes you lose more muscle.
Intresting that my post have fallen from +4 insightful to 0 flamebait.
And the easiest way to get into a negative energy balance are to just consume less energy.
I don't know what the butterfly effect is.
..), also if you eat more chances are you consume more antioxidants.
I don't know if it's 100% proved and fact to say that raised metabolism makes the cells die faster, but looking at free radicals and what happens to rats if you starve them it seems likely.
But then people do die for other reasons when cells not being able to split any more aswell. (Thought cancer risks may raise aswell I guess.)
The question is if exercise makes you live longer or not, I guess it depends on the intensity and volume (and drugs
I know it will, but he said 13.6 kg bodyfat in 5 days. 100 kcal reduction won't make that happen.
And I didn't said 20.000 kcal was a good idea, but it is what is needed to lose all that fat.
Why turn bird eggs? The theory of Magnetrition says, this need to be moved is a requirement throughout the life of all warm blooded animals. The movement is seen happening/taking place as a result of a survival instinct, diminishable with age, until now. Magnetrition points out movement of the warm blooded cell is required to keep a magnetically migrating organelle moving and thus performing its rule in the microscopic biological structure. Plants need photosynthesis. CHLOROPLASTS ARE PHOTOTACTIC. Are the mitochondria magnetotactic? Do warm-blooded animals need "Magnetosynthesis"?
Alan, Search + Share ~ Magnetrition, http://www.freewebs.com/alanejackson/index.htm
You listed all the effects that increasing cell metabolism would do with one of them being killing more oceans. It isn't quite the butterfly effect which says that a single butterfly flapping wings in one part of the world can cause a hurrican in another part. With your theory multiple cells (in one body with multiple bodies having this done) having their metabolism increased would eventually kill oceans. I find it far fetched just as I do the butterfly effect.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
We are already killing the life in the oceans. Higher metabolism = require more food = even less fish in the oceans. Not very hard to understand?
.. If at all existing.
The steps from butterfly to hurricane are probably bigger